Use approved antimicrobial soaps or hand sanitizer between care of individual patients.
Perform hand hygiene before donning gloves and after removing gloves.
Wash hands and other skin surfaces immediately and thoroughly if contaminated with blood or other body fluids.
Consider saliva when blood is visible to be potentially infectious, even though it has not been implicated in HIV transmission.
Transmission of HIV/AIDS is possible from stool specimens, especially if there is a possibility of blood existing in the stool.
Healthcare workers with open skin lesions or skin conditions should not engage in direct patient care until the condition clears up or does not present a risk to the patient.
Development of an HIV infection during pregnancy may put the fetus at risk for infection.
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Clinical Alert
The healthcare facility environment is rarely implicated in disease transmission, except among patients who are immunocompromised. Nonetheless, inadvertent exposures to environmental pathogens (e.g., Aspergillus and Legionella species) or airborne pathogens (e.g., Mycobacterium tuberculosis and varicella-zoster virus) can result in adverse patient outcomes and cause illness among healthcare workers. Environmental infection can be minimized by increased appropriate use of cleaners and disinfectants, appropriate maintenance of medical equipment (e.g., automated endoscope reprocessors or hydrotherapy equipment), adherence to water quality standards for hemodialysis and to ventilation standards for specialized care environments (e.g., airborne infection isolation rooms, protective environments, or operating rooms), and prompt management of water intrusion into the facility. Routine environmental sampling is not usually advised except for water quality determinations in hemodialysis settings and other situations where sampling is directed by epidemiologic principles and results can be applied directly to infection control decisions.